


The Space Eternal

by 28mansions



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, BDSM, Bad BDSM Etiquette, Betrayal, Bisexual Male Character, Dom/sub, Dominance, Dry Sex, Emotional Manipulation, Erotic Electrostimulation, Exhibitionism, Explicit Sexual Content, Extremely Dubious Consent, Flashbacks, Flogging, Forced Masturbation, Forced Orgasm, Gay Male Character, Gun Kink, Hair-pulling, Heavy Drinking, Humiliation, M/M, Male Homosexuality, Master/Slave, Military Kink, Nipple Play, Non-Consensual, Orgasm Delay, Original Slash, POV First Person, Painful Sex, Porn With Plot, Public Blow Jobs, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rough Kissing, Science Fiction, Sexual Content, Sexual Slavery, Sexual Tension, Slash, Slow Burn, Solitary Confinement, Space Opera, Submission, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Threats of Violence, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:01:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21772618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/28mansions/pseuds/28mansions
Summary: In the 25th century, tech thief Zakari Jann becomes the prisoner of an officer of the Collective, Dillon Croyle. Adjusting to life as the enemy's property, he must decide where his loyalties lie, whether to his anti-Collective ethics or to the man who controls his life. But Dillon has a plan of his own for Zak, and it brings about consequences neither man anticipated.Plot-driven, updated at least twice weekly. Aggressively tagged.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 15
Kudos: 82
Collections: A Whisper to the  Dark Side, Chains: The Powerfic Archive, Queer Characters Collection, Slavefic Central





	1. Chapter 1

There are better places to be when fleeing from the Collective than the Disappearing City, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I had landed planetside and spent the last few days trying to keep away from the goons marching through the arcology. For most people, that might mean keeping your head down and finding somewhere to keep out of sight while you get your senses back. For me, of course, that meant fucking with them on the Grid.

I shouldn’t have done that. Easy to say now, of course, as a fugitive. Harder for the version of me that landed on Morgan’s World with a chip in my arm and a bigger one on my shoulder. I was too much of a coward to meet them in person, but I wanted to mess with them nonetheless. So I sent out a few missives, half-drunk on some terrific booze and entirely out of my senses.

It didn’t take them long to find me. I had decided to sack out in some fleabag squat at the far end of the dome, telling myself that if need be, I’d just grab a haz suit and slip out into the wastelands. I could scavenge out there well enough before a smuggling ship landed. I’d done it before.

But I hadn’t realized that I’d left a trail. Not in the messages, of course. I’m not that dumb. But they must have had someone reading the psionic resonance from the messages and narrowing it down within the arcology, because in the space of less than a standard week, I had gray-suited maniacs beating down my door.

“We know you’re in there, you squirrely little fucker. Open up!”

They hadn’t asked nicely. I foraged under the mattress for my holdout gun, thoughts of not giving them the satisfaction of taking me alive crossing through my head. But it was a stupid plan, really. They could just put me on ice and then revive me when they got the opportunity. The only thing I would lose would be the ability to either escape or dictate surrender on my own terms.

Five shots. There were probably four squad members and a leader out there. One shot for each. I’d have to be precise. But I’d done it before, and I could do it again. I just had to clear my thoughts and concentrate. I had the element of surprise, for the moment. I knew the way they would come into the room, and they didn’t know where I’d be. So I climbed atop the mattress onto the storage racks above. There were no windows in the space, so there was no exit, but at least I would have the advantage of firing downwards at them, and they would have to swing their guns upward. Probably half a second’s advantage.

Sending a thought to whoever was said to be out there in the universe, I climbed on top of the racks, hunkering down, shoving some random stuff in front of me. It wouldn’t entirely stop an energy bolt, if they’d set it to kill, but it would repel it somewhat.

The door swung open, and five soldiers marched in. I couldn’t tell gender beneath the standard-issue uniforms and combat helmets, but it didn’t much matter. I was going to knock them all out, or kill them if I had to, or they were going to do the same to me.

Leveling my gun on the closest of them, I pressed the button to fire. Energy arced out, hitting one of the duraplast suits, knocking the first soldier on her back, her surprised scream high enough to suggest the pronoun. It hadn't been a kill shot, but it was enough to render her no longer a threat. Perfect. One down, four to go.

But firing had given away my whereabouts, and I watched as they leveled their guns up—but one of them wasn’t aiming to hit me. That made no initial sense, even as I crouched behind my makeshift barricade, until I realized that it made a whole hell of a lot of sense. The energy blast snapped the steel shelving rod in two, and the rafter on which I had crouched tilted crazily.

It wasn’t the most dignified maneuver I’d ever done, but I was too preoccupied with making sure I didn’t shoot myself in the gut, holding my gun out and away from my body as I fell ass backwards onto the mattress. The cheap bedding thudded with my graceless landing, and I would have sprung up in another second if the gun barrel poking me in the neck hadn’t stopped me short in my efforts.

“Null Set, alias Zakari Jann. We’re here to apprehend you under the orders of the Collective.” The voice that spoke to me, that of the squad leader, was probably male. It definitely had the sound of a determined speaker, and even if I hadn’t been held at gunpoint, I might have been slightly taken aback at the confidence in the man’s voice.

One of the squad brought down their gun hard on my left wrist. I yelped, releasing the weapon I’d kept with me. I felt vulnerable, trapped there, but worse things had happened to me before. I’d always found a way out before. I would do so again.

I sighed, leaning back and shutting my eyes. “Whatever spooky bastard you have reading my messages to track me, tell them they can go fuck themselves in the head. I’ve heard that’s possible for the espions.”

The squad leader laughed, a dry noise, but the gun barrel at my neck didn’t move an inch. I knew now that he had to be the one who had shot to bring me down, who had out-thought me in my efforts to keep a step ahead of the Collective, and I grimaced. Getting out of this might be trickier than I had anticipated.

The man removed his helmet. He was male or at least passed for it, with a strong build and a firm jawline. His blond hair was a little shaggy for propriety, but otherwise he was the very model of a Collective soldier. He still seemed genuinely amused by my words, except for the lack of humor in his eyes. “You shouldn’t have come back here, Mr. Jann.”

“No shit, graybelly. What’s the next thing you’re going to tell me? Did I kill your girl over there?” Time to lie. “Don’t worry. I was firing to stun. Don’t know about what you had chambered th—”

I don’t remember finishing the sentence, because the last thing I saw was the man lifting the gun above my eyes, and then blackness slid down over the scene like a curtain.

* * *

It hadn’t taken much to break up Insight. But the word went out and, within an hour or two, we were all packing to leave the system. I tossed out half my stuff as irrelevant or easily spaced, taking only my compdeck, folding the flexible material beneath my jacket, and some old-timey liquor I’d been saving for a special occasion. Nothing like getting yourself onto a ship sailing right into the heart of Collective-controlled space to make it a special occasion, I figured.

“Zak, I’m sorry. You know I don’t have a choice but to tell everyone to scatter.” Marko was at my side, and I wondered why he was bothering with me when he could easily have talked to anyone he wanted to. I was irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Sure, Marko and I had slept together more often than not, but he wasn’t the most particular of people, and his tastes ranged through all genders and ages. So why was he hanging around me like rust on the bottom tread of a tracker?

I raised the bottle at him in indication. “Tell it to this ’65 Greenleaf whiskey.”

“Right.” Marko turned to the bottle I was holding, a rueful grin crossing his stubbled face. “I’m sorry Zak’s got to drink you all by himself on some crappy ship heading for—where are you headed, anyway?”

I shrugged. “First station with a decent bar once I get off Morgan’s World.”

“So Osiris, then.”

“Lord of the Underworld and Judge of the Dead. Great place for a bar.” I shoved the bottle into my airtight packing bag, hoping Marko would turn away and busy himself with worrying about someone else. 

But I wasn’t so lucky. He was watching me, his face drawn with concern. “You know I don’t blame you for any of this, Zak.”

“Wish I could say the same.”

Marko winced, drawing back. It took him a moment to speak, but then again, sometimes being accused of a crime and knowing you’re a guilty shit can do that to you. “Neither of us had anything to do with the signal getting tracked down,” he insisted. He reached for my arm, drawing me close. I could catch the scent of the cologne he wore, something that he said was probably reminiscent of a garden back on Sol Three, not that either of us had ever seen the place from which humanity had spread centuries ago. “You’re a good man, Zak. You’re a trustworthy one. I know you’ll do the right thing.”

I wondered why he was murmuring platitudes at me, and almost pulled away, but his fingers tightened on me, and I relented. Only then did I realize that he was dropping something into my bag, his brows raised. I would have to check that out once I got the opportunity. But he distracted me further even as his hand pulled away, his mouth pressing hard on mine. There was a directness about his affection that I liked, and I shivered as his teeth ran along my lower lip, pulling at it slightly.

Marko’s free hand slid to the front of my slacks, and he squeezed hard. I felt myself stiffen, but stayed put as he spoke: “Something to remember me by. Don’t forget to check your bag once you’re in the clear and out of this place. When it’s safe to get back together, I’ll have work for you. I want you to do some investigating for me. I think I’ve found a good target to pull from.”

The last thing I remember about that day is the way he looked at me as he backed off. He looked hesitant, as if he had more to tell me, but I couldn’t think of what would possibly be so important that I needed to ask, then and there. I wish I’d had the courage to do so, but how could I have known? I shouldered my bag, giving him a grimace that might have passed for a smile if you were as drunk as I planned to get in a few hours, and made my way out of the safe house for the docking port.

It wouldn’t be hard to find myself a working crew to hire onto and make my way to Osiris. That was the last work I planned to do for a long time.

* * *

“Am I dead?” I muttered. I came to with the face of the Collective soldier swimming into my vision, hovering above me from where I was lying. I was sprawled on a pallet that was only a few inches off the floor. From how uncomfortable it was, it was probably military derivation. And from the antiseptic scent that permeated my thoughts, I knew I wasn’t in the flophouse anymore. I was clad in something different, too, a jumpsuit without a belt or shoelaces by which I might have done myself in. It was a humiliating spot to find myself in, and I was slowly beginning to realize how really out of luck I was.

“Not yet,” the other man said. “Play your cards right and it’ll take a long while. Assuming, of course, you do want to stay alive.”

It was a good question, even if not particularly phrased as one. I didn’t really want to be alive and under the auspices of the Collective. But I propped myself up on my arms from where I had lain, studying the face of the man before me. That same strength of purpose was still writ large in his face, but his eyes had changed. There was humor in them now, but it seemed a somewhat remote humor, as if he was only allowing himself to be human because he had power over me, someone in his control. And only _so_ human, at that.

“What’s your name, since you know mine?” I asked idly. I reached a hand to my face, feeling my jaw. Nothing broken. The man had set the gun’s setting to stun me instead of to kill me, and at close range that had been enough to knock me out, but the recoil had been soft enough not to screw up my face. Small miracles.

“Dillon Croyle.”

“There’s a Collective name if I ever heard it.” I wasn’t lying. It was a sturdy name. It fit the man to whom I was speaking. Hard edges to the consonants, and a certain grandeur that I could see written on the nameplate of a ship somewhere. The _C.S.S. Croyle_ wasn’t an awkward-sounding callsign at all.

“Coming from someone like you, I’ll choose to take that as a compliment,” the Collective man told me. “Major, if you’re wondering.”

I wasn’t, but I didn’t see fit to tell him that, keeping my mouth shut, considering where I was and what I would be about to face. I knew the process that Croyle and his ilk had in store for me. I would be taken to the judicial assizes, and would be brainwashed and made into numbered labor. That’s what’s supposed to happen to everyone who tries to hit the Collective, after all, and I was sure it was what would happen to me. They had my name; they had my Grid handle. I had little left with which to bargain, and I was entirely done.

At least, that’s what I thought at the time.

Croyle studied me for a long moment, amusement flickering on his lips. I didn’t like that near smile; it unnerved me, though I coudn’t say why. He leaned in, and his breath was as frosty as his personality seemed to be, his mouth coming inches from my ear. I resisted the urge to pull away, although maybe that was due to the hand on my chest, keeping me pinned there.

“You don’t seem to realize how truly fucked you really are, Mr. Jann. Either that or you’ve got a good game face.”

I appreciated the compliment, but even as he spoke, I knew the second half wasn’t the case. I didn’t know what he was talking about. He seemed to sense the confusion on my face as he pulled back, patting me on the chest. The gesture felt too familial, too close for comfort, and I should have spat in his face. But I didn’t.

“I’ve done you a favor. Call it generosity if you want, even if you don’t believe it. I’ve been to the assizes for you and I’ve had your case heard _in absentia._ ”

Didn’t I get a right to be heard? I tried to focus on Croyle, but I was still only a few minutes conscious, and he seemed indistinct to me. There was little else to focus on in the room, though; I was on the inside of a blank gray cube, and the only light that was in it shone from overhead. Was I still on Morgan’s World? I couldn’t be sure.

“They were going to kill you as a threat to the Collective, but I managed to negotiate a different result. You cost me a little prestige, but I’m confident you’ll make up for it. I’m confident you’ll want to.”

He was speaking strangely. I wanted to tell him that. The way he referred to me made me uneasy; I could feel my insides start to churn in knowing apprehension. I had heard of this happening to people, but it was rare and discouraged. Whether in the Collective or outside of it, nobody thought of themselves as slavers anymore.

“You’re my property now, Mr. Jann. Your life is in my hands. But I have something I think you can help me with.”

I spoke before I thought. “What’s the matter, Major? Can’t get one of your squad to suck your cock?”

There have been better choices I’ve made in my life than that. The other man laughed silently rather than reacting more overtly, as if he had anticipated my comment. Without saying a word, he pulled away, pushing himself to stand from where he’d seated himself next to the pallet. There was a faint beeping, and a nearly indistinguishable panel in the wall opened. I tried to squint past him, lacking the strength to pull myself up and try to dart after him, but his form blocked most of the surroundings, and then he was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Left with nothing to process but the gray walls around me, I could feel my sanity slowly beginning to dissolve. It was cold enough to make me wish I’d been spaced instead, and seemed to be getting colder. Had the temperature been dropped on me? There were no windows to tell where I was, so I had no way of gauging my surroundings. The light overhead never changed, staying the same intensity for some hours until it dimmed to night, which I figured meant I was supposed to sleep. I wondered if it followed the pattern of the arcology, rotating on a twenty-four hour schedule.

I was starting to get hungry. My stomach protested the lack of food. I needed to piss, but I wasn’t sure where I could do that. I thought about throwing caution to the stars and dousing the wall, but something told me I would not enjoy the results.

With nothing to think about but the nearly invisible door Croyle had gone through, and my own very isolated situation, I tried to think back on what happened before I had landed on Morgan’s World. I had been a nobody on Osiris, a drunk among drunks, a target for nothing except con jobs and cheap hookers.

But Morgan’s World had drawn me back. There was something there I needed to do, but being captured by the Collective had not been in the plans. I aimed a vicious kick at the door, but it was metal, and I knew it would hurt, so I drew my foot back, trying to channel my growing frustration at the situation. There had to be a way to turn it to my benefit. I only needed to figure out how.

The agony of not being able to relieve myself was starting to become unbearable. Too much liquor, maybe. I was almost bursting when a panel slid from a corner of the room, revealing a small hole in the floor. It stank, but I was in no condition to judge. As I struggled out of the complicated jumpsuit to relieve myself, no fly in the garment to make it easy, I did wonder who the last person was to have found themselves in such a predicament. Had they been as scared as I was beginning to feel? More or less?

Was that person still around? Croyle was a man of some status; if indeed he had bought my freedom from the assizes, he might have bought that of someone else, too. I knew there was some heady tension between us, but I coudn’t be sure if he preferred women and others as well.

I finished and was struggling back into the jumpsuit when the door slid open. I’m a perceptive guy; my gaze shot there and figured out there was nobody blocking the door much quicker than my body reacted. But, sooner than I would have previously anticipated, I was bolting for the open door, until I slammed bodily into something hard and invisible, mere feet from the exit.

My face stung from the impact and from the humiliation. It had been pretty obvious bait, and I had fallen for it, like I was a first-round recruit in some intelligence school. I chalked it up to the fitful sleep I’d had on the pallet, and took a step back.

Croyle was taking his time, it seemed. He didn’t enter at first. He waited another five or six seconds before he stepped into the room, his demeanor casual and maybe even cheerful. His gaze locked on me, and this time I saw what could have been warmth in his eyes. At that particular moment, I would have preferred ice.

“Force field. Each time you go into the box, it will be up, for your safety and mine. I would advise not making that same mistake again, but I figure you know that already. That looked like a pretty hard hit.”

I managed to get the final arm of the jumpsuit on. I longed to tell Croyle to go fuck himself with the tentacles of a Tarsis, but for now I figured my glare at him would have to do.

“You’re a smart enough man, Mr. Jann, and I don’t want you doing any undue harm to yourself, so I’ll make this simple: you were chipped while you were passed out. The chips allow me to code in some precautions, such as the force field that separates us. It will ensure you don’t try to escape. If need be, I can spread it throughout the place so you can’t commit suicide, standing in a two-foot-by-two-foot box until I decide to let you out.”

I felt as if I’d been punched in the gut. “There are laws against that.”

“For citizens, yes. Not for convicted criminals.”

“I wasn’t convicted. You stepped in before I could be convicted.”

Blond brows raised at me. “Technicalities.”

A silence fell between us. I couldn’t find a real argument against him, as repellent as I found what had been done to me. I was still trying to file away what I could, though, so I took the moment to analyze Croyle. He was taller than I, though not by much. He was much broader, though, with a trim physique suited for a soldier. Clean-shaven, too. The only real concession to style that I could note was the length of his blond hair, striking with the browner streaks that shot through it. Rather than a standard military cut, his hairstyle had been allowed to grow a bit longer on top, the undercut of the sides keeping the longer top in control. His eyes were light, the color of cracked blue marble, and seemed to look through me with a keen, penetrating intelligence.

He was a man used to giving orders, not receiving them, but he was not a brute, I hoped. More than that, I coudn’t judge, or at least didn’t allow myself to judge. Compared to him though, in my dark hair and eyes contrasting with my sallow skin, and my short, slim build, with my frame and fingers built for deftness, I felt weak, almost childish. I’m no soldier, and I was quite conscious of that when I compared the two of us.

There was a whirring, and I felt the barrier I had encountered slowly dissipate, my fingers losing their grip where they’d scrabbled against the hard, invisible material.

Before I could try to dart out of the room again, Croyle took a step forward. If I had thought, I might have pushed him aside and run. But I was overthinking things and stood there stupidly, as if he was some holovid actor broadcast in three definitions, and I was watching him close in on me, impossibly close but never actually reaching me.

Then we made contact. He reached out for my shoulder, hauling me forward as if I was a gear shift on a ship, and then his other hand wrapped tightly around my waist. I should have reacted more quickly and violently, but the moment passed, and I felt my body press tightly against his.

My pulse felt like it was jackhammering in my throat, an uneasy skipping rhythm beating impossibly fast. I didn’t want to be this close to him, but I didn’t have a choice, and the ease with which he had grabbed me was overwhelming.

The hand that had been on my shoulder slid to the back of my head, his fingers burying themselves in my hair and tugging my head back slightly. It didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t supposed to. His face angled down towards mine, and his lips pressed themselves onto mine.

It wasn’t a chaste kiss; it was an unequal one, with him demanding from me more than he was offering of himself. But it had been hours in coming, and I wasn’t about to pull away from the admittedly enjoyable contact. I opened my lips willingly, expecting him to slip his tongue inside my mouth, wondering how he’d react to the piercing on the tip of my tongue. But he only pressed his lips more firmly against mine, as if claiming my exhalations for his own.

I shifted my breaths upwards, exhaling through my nose, the rush of air bouncing between us and tickling the skin above my upper lip. He tilted my head back a little more, progressively, until I realized that my head truly was angled as far back as it would go. My knees threatened to buckle with the tension with which he held me, but I locked them straight.

With a soft pop, he pulled his mouth back, breaking the possessive kiss. Was he breathless too or was I just imagining it? Wiping his lips, he smiled a bit crookedly at me. It was the first genuinely appealing look I had seen him give.

“You learn quickly, Mr. Jann. Is that survivalist instinct or something else entirely?”

I didn’t want to think what the _something else_ was, but suddenly I wasn’t brave enough to ask what he meant. Struck dumb momentarily, I let out a reflexive laugh. He crossed his arms. It seemed to be an invitation to take a shot at him, and I wasn’t about to turn down the opportunity.

“I don’t know what you’re looking for, you fucking bastard, but I’m not it.”

Dillon tilted his head at me. That crooked smile had not vanished from his face. “Then what was your reaction just then? You wanted that kiss.” He waved a hand, and the gesture seemed to be strangely dismissive of me; I hated it. “You wanted every part of it. You wanted my hand in your hair, pulling your head back so I could kiss you from above, and if I’d slipped you some tongue, you’d have wanted it too.”

I couldn’t deny that. It was the only thing I had wanted in those hungry, feverish moments. But it had to be due to desperation, right?

“I wanted it too,” he drawled, even though I hadn’t asked. Then, with a nod as if I was some military subordinate, he turned on a heel and made his way from the room, calling over his shoulder, “See you tomorrow. You’ll be fed then, don’t worry. And if you remember where the toilet was, it’s set to motion activation now, should you need to use it again.”

* * *

I was starving and thirsty. I couldn’t think of anything else besides getting food and drink. Spots flickered before my eyes. I remembered the studies; people could go about a hundred hours without drinking. If the darkening and lightening corresponded to a standard day on a spaceship or in an arcology, I was halfway to dying of thirst.

I’d have drunk from a pet bowl if it was handed to me, but it was a small bottle of water that made an appearance instead. I chugged it unquestioningly, rolling the water in my mouth to wet my chapped lips and thick-feeling tongue, swallowing and reaching out for another bottle.

“Careful,” Croyle said. “You don’t want to be sick. I’m going to measure out your water so you don’t intoxicate yourself from it.” It would be a few more minutes before he would give me a second water bottle. Instead, he handed me a nutrient bar, and I tore into it, even though it had all the appeal of eating dirt.

He watched as if I were a child he was nursing back to health, something obnoxiously placating in his demeanor. When I had fed myself enough for his satisfaction, he handed me another water bottle. I did my best to drink more slowly this time, pacing myself as best I knew how.

“As soon as you’re done with that, we’re going to leave this space,” Croyle said. “Probably a relief. I can’t imagine staring at nothingness for the past few days has been very easy on your brain. If you fuck up, I’ll toss you back in here again, though, so remember what this feels like.”

He hunched next to the pallet he had set out for me, the food and water he’d brought me at his side. The cot was too close to the ground for me to feel like I could get any leverage on him, but I didn’t care. There was another nutrient bar to work my way through. I unwrapped it as I listened to him, finishing it in under a minute.

“I am going to use you how I want to. Fight me, and it will go poorly for you. Do what I need you to do, and this can be as pleasant for you as I can possibly make it. I know you hate this, Zak. I would in your position, too. But for now, I am the lone person determining your fate.”

“So you do need someone to suck your cock,” I murmured, and braced myself for a strike across the face. None came, though.

“As part of the bargain, yes, but not the only part of it. I need you to help me with something far more involved, and given your reputation, I thought you were worth saving to help me with that very predicament. In between that, of course, you’ll be doing anything else I ask of you.” He doled out another water bottle to me.

“I’m not much, man,” I said, trying to think of what to call him. ‘Mr. Croyle’ felt too distant. ‘Major’ would imply that I was a member of the Collective, and that was definitely out of the question. ‘Dillon’ was the best of any alternative, I decided, but it still felt too close. “I’m just a two-bit thief and drunk who was stupid enough to come back to the planet he fled weeks ago.”

“True,” Croyle—now Dillon—admitted, and I had to admit he was right, despite myself. “But also a resource despite your very obvious liability. I’m led to understand that you have some facility with technology, and I need you to help me with it.”

“Lost your Collective identification?”

“For every smartass remark you make, I will put you in this place for an hour longer. Consider your words carefully, or else you’ll be forced to think of nothing else,” the blond man stated placidly.

I grimaced. He really did have all the advantages of the situation. I’m not enough of an arrogant bastard to avoid admitting when I’m outmatched, and this was definitely a situation for which I didn’t have an easy answer. So I fell silent. Apparently seeing that I’d been taken aback, Dillon smiled briefly, patting me on the leg. I shivered, but stayed still.

“Come with me,” my captor said. “I want to show you something.”

He rose, and I didn’t want to be left behind in the gray-walled nothingness, so I moved to follow him. I’d have followed him anywhere if he would have promised me the chance to not go stir-crazy in the twenty-fifth-century version of an oubliette.

We walked silently through the near-invisible doorway in the cell, and I almost fell forward into him. I had been expecting solid ground. Although I had my space legs well enough, the gentle constant pitch of a station in orbit hadn’t been a feeling I had expected. My eyes adjusted easily to the dim light, though, as I squinted before relaxing my gaze, letting my focus settle.

“Careful,” Dillon said, but he didn’t look back at me.

I longed for there to be someone else in the corridor through which he was leading me, but there was nobody at first. We were walking through the innards of a station, and I turned my thoughts to memorizing my surroundings. If I had the opportunity to escape, I would need to know the layout.

He turned right, and then left, moving parallel to the initial corridor. A few hundred feet down that corridor, and a door whirred open softly.

Gentle, ambient music hit my ears; the first sound I’d heard in maybe two days besides Dillon’s voice, my own voice, and footsteps. I was conscious of a luxurious setup before I could pick out the particulars about it. An ancient four-poster bed dominated the room, smooth silken sheets atop it. I could have slept in it for days, I guessed. There was a picture of a woman hanging up on the wall, set in sumptuous wall designs. The furniture was heavy and likely made of actual wood. A door to the right of the bed led to another room, but it was shut and locked.

“You won’t be able to pass the locks; they’re not coded to your chip,” Dillon stated simply. I had no urge to go further into his quarters, I reasoned, and then realized that he meant the exit door to the bedroom.

“Lie down, if you want,” he said.

“Don’t you have work to do?”

He laughed, shaking his head, but offered nothing in reply.

I didn’t need to be offered the chance to relax twice; I let myself drop on the bed with a sigh of relief. It was better than my flophouse mattress on Morgan’s World by far. It was better than the by-the-hour rentals on Osiris, too. It was probably the most luxurious surface I’d ever slept upon. Not for the first time, I wondered at the power the Collective had. Its military officers could afford so much compared to what we, the rabble, could eke out.

I had nearly drifted off to sleep when he spoke again. But his voice was firm, something hard in it that I hadn’t heard since before we had kissed, and I instantly fumbled to wake up and pay attention.

“You will call me ‘master’. Even if you don’t believe it yet, you will. Even if you don’t want to yet, you will. Anything other than that or ‘sir’, without permission, and I will find a way to make sure that you remember the proper forms of address. Even if it means you’ll be screaming it before it sticks. Do I make myself clear, Zak?”

“Crystal,” I mumbled, but I was half-asleep. He could have told me that he was really a space god assuming the form of a human for the time being, and I’d have agreed to whatever he would have claimed, if only he would have let me sleep. What concerned me more than what he was asking to be called was what he had called me, anyway. I dimly realized that he’d called me by my nickname twice, and wondered at the familiarity of the word.

He traced a hand down my leg, and I realized all too late how thin the material of the jumpsuit really was. “Good. Smart boy.” His hand moved between my legs, cupping my balls lightly. I felt my shaft twitch even before he tightened his grip a bit, the jumpsuit groaning in protest and my voice following suit.

“I don’t need to ask permission for what I’m about to do to you,” he said flatly, no hint of doubt in his voice. “I am going to fuck you hard enough that it might hurt, if you’re not ready for it. I’ve hurt people before, but only because they haven’t listened. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to. Or if you want me to.”

Any vestige of sleep had fled from me. I had no real vocabulary to respond.

“You can’t deny you’ve been thinking about it,” he continued. “That moment with the force field between us, when you were sizing me up. The way you haven’t pulled away from me even once. The fact that you would have let me kiss you even more deeply than I did. You must want this to happen.”

It might have sounded crazy if he hadn’t set out all those particulars. Left with them, there was no way that I could say he was wrong. I hadn’t pulled away from his hand between my legs either. I could feel myself start to stiffen in anticipation, my dick swelling and lifting slightly. He ran a thumb where he was holding me, before pulling away, his eyes glittering in the dimly lit room.

“First, you’ll give your body to me,” he said as he rose from the bed. “Next, your sense of control. In the end, your dedication as well. But I don’t need that to get what I want from you. I’ll still get it.”

I wish I could have told him it wasn’t true, but my voice stuck in my throat.


	3. Chapter 3

It took us a while to finish. But at the start, things moved so quickly that I’m still not sure what order they were in. I remember the feel of the other man’s hand suddenly drifting away, the sliding down of the jumpsuit’s zipper, the exposure of my skin above the waist to the climate-controlled air of the other man’s bedroom. He had spared little expense for his surroundings; my gaze drifted over his shoulder, fixing on a portrait that was on the opposite wall. A woman with flowing dark hair and large, luminous eyes stared back at me, almost seeming to gaze straight at me.

Dillon seemed to know what I was studying. “An old girlfriend of mine.” I heard tension thread through his voice, wondering at it, but the snippet was gone before I could pick it up and tug on it. “It’s a real painting, not holographic,” he added, as if I was enough of a connoisseur to be able to tell the difference.

I’m not too picky when it comes to whom I sleep with, but it surprised me to hear Dillon admit he’d had a girlfriend. I had expected him to only sleep with men, and a pang of uncertainty coursed through me.

He saw it; I know he saw it. His gaze was thoughtful on me for a moment before he pulled me in for another possessive kiss. My jumpsuit fell half away. He yanked at the rest of it, letting the top half settle around my waist. All the while, his lips were forcing mine open. I yielded to the pressure, feeling his tongue thrust past my teeth, pressing mine down to the base of my mouth. It was casually intrusive enough that I tensed slightly, but the tip of his tongue tracing along the roof of my mouth was too surprising not to submit to.

I moaned into the kiss. The air against my skin had been temperate enough not to affect me, but as the man leaned against me, I realized my nipples had hardened. _No piercings there,_ I thought, as his clothed chest pressed against me, but as if I had summoned it, he was now toying idly with my tongue piercing for a second or two before he broke the kiss, pulling away.

“Ever been fucked before?” he asked bluntly.

The question made me stiffen a little more inside the jumpsuit. I nodded.

“Details.”

“I only sleep with men. Sometimes I fuck them; most times they fuck me.” I left out that it had been a few weeks since I had slept with anyone, in standard time. I’d been too busy being drunk and scared to think about getting my rocks off. Some people say panic is an aphrodisiac, but not that kind of panic. Not the deep, philosophical kind that makes you want to hide away from the world.

Dillon glanced down at my obvious interest, half-smiling, but pushed himself off the bed, moving to unfasten his belt. “I’m not quite as narrow in my preferences, but, if it helps any, I wouldn’t have turned you down if we had met at a bar and you’d approached me.”

 _The same to you,_ I thought. I didn’t say it, though. I was too busy watching as he slid his trousers down, revealing himself to me. He was interested, from the way his dick rose between his legs, although the length already there with only mild interest seemed more intimidating than I had anticipated. He wasn’t the biggest I’d seen, but at seven inches, he was bigger than I am by a good two, and the width of the shaft spoke of a primal force that was normally kept well-hidden by the uniform and the control he exhibited. He was circumcised, like all of the Collective are. Nobody believes the myths about cleanliness anymore, and religion isn’t much of a concern, but the Collective isn’t big on individualism, and mandating the cut is one way to ensure nobody differs, even in their most private moments.

He stroked his shaft a few times; it hardened, lifting further. The head bobbed between us, lighter than most of the man’s tan body, as it were a point of light to focus upon.

“Lick it. Get me as wet as you think you need me.” Apparently that was all the preparation we were going to undertake.

My groin was throbbing, aching to be touched, but I knew his game. He was going to avoid getting me off for as long as I could stand it, ensuring I was primed to explode every single following second.

Mentally, this seemed absurd. I had been told that I was Dillon’s property, even though as far as I could tell, I was still myself, still whole and unbent to his will. I shouldn’t want to do this, I told myself. I should want to find a gun, shoot him in the junk, and run like hell. But something kept me from starting that search, even though he did nothing to stop the possibility from happening.

I reached down to check myself. I was definitely hard, although it wasn’t half as obvious as his erection was. But his words were sharp, as startling as if he’d smacked me across the face. _“Don’t.”_ There was genuine menace in the tightness of his face, the bleakness of his eyes, and I pulled my hand away, if reluctantly.

Needing to jerk off all the more for every second I was denied, I slipped off the bed, dropping to my knees in the claustrophobic space left between Dillon’s body and the mattress. My jaw ached even at the thought of taking him fully, but I moistened my lips, settling them on the tip as gently as I coud manage.

He grunted, placing his shaft against my mouth, rubbing there for a moment. I tongued him carefully, a gentle, tentative stroke. His skin was warm and clean, and the scent of him was subtly musky, mingling with a soapy trail of what had to be a recent shower.

I didn’t open my mouth to take him. That would come later. For the moment, I had only been told to wet him, so I ran my tongue around the ridge of his cockhead, dampening his shaft as best I could under the circumstances, my tongue piercing sliding against him and making him twitch. My mouth was simultaneously salivating at the task and dry in panic. Fortunately, my interest won out over my prudence, and I was able to leave him wet enough.

He stroked his cock against my cheek as I pulled back. Glancing up over his trim waist and powerful frame, I saw his eyes half-lidded, his mouth slightly agape. If it was an act, it was a hell of a convincing one. All the threat of the previous minutes had disappeared, as if it had never been there. In those seconds, we were equals in passion, and I wanted to keep that going for as long as I could.

He slapped me lightly with his cock, a nudge rather than an assault, bringing my thoughts back to the practical from the metaphorical. “Up. Turn around. Bend over.” His voice was thick, and he gave no more directions than were absolutely necessary for me to comply with his request.

Splaying a hand on the edge of the bed, I pulled myself to my feet. The jumpsuit was loose but still mostly covered me, and I knew that wouldn’t last long. I grabbed for what little purchase I could find in the mattress, laying my stomach against it, bent over with everything below my waist hanging off the bed.

Fabric ripped, but it wasn’t the clean tear of a knife. Dillon seemed to be ripping apart the jumpsuit with his bare hands, popping enough seams to make the drab gray material pool at my ankles. I wondered for a moment at his not asking me to step out of the clothing, before I realized that the jumpsuit legs would keep me more or less in place, however awkwardly.

His fingertips pressed just below the base of my spine, thumbing my tailbone. I groaned, tilting my hips up, my fully hard shaft pressing against the bedframe, and my balls feeling dangerously exposed.

“From that pierced tongue of yours, I’d have expected at least some jewelry below the waist,” the man murmured. “Maybe we’ll fix that. But not today. Today, I’m going to see how tight you are.”

That was all the warning I got before his cockhead, damp with my rapidly drying spit, nestled against my ass. I could feel his hands gripping me to part me, before he slid in an inch or so past the head. The increase was rapid, too dry for comfort, and merciless, but thankfully, it was nowhere near his full length.

I bore down against Dillon, letting out a small moan of surprise and a bit of pain. I wasn’t gagged and hadn’t been told to keep quiet; I guessed he wanted my reaction. It was the same feeling of being invaded as I’d had in the second kiss we had shared, with his tongue seeking to claim whatever it explored.

I could do little but try to adjust to the cock inside me; I gasped, my fingers clutching the sheets. His hands pressed down on my back, flattening me a little more against the bed. He moved another half-inch in, even as I could feel myself pulse tightly against him. The head of his cock seemed to spread within me, filling me more thoroughly than anyone had in a while.

“You’ve done this before,” he murmured, but it was a compliment rather than an accusation. “Not for a bit, though. Your body isn’t as used to it as your mind is.” His words were thoughtful, trailing off.

He stopped fucking me, leaning a little more heavily against me so his cock pressed in at a different angle, moving in enough to hit my prostate. I groaned wordlessly, which made him chuckle appreciatively.

“I like the sound of your voice, Zak. I like hearing you enjoy this. I might never silence you, unless of course I’m choking you with my cock,” Dillon murmured behind me.

I was about to respond, but a sudden, stinging smack on my butt cheek stopped the reply I might have given. I tightened on him reflexively, feeling the recoil from the slap jolt through me and likely him as well. He made a pleased noise in the back of his throat, but moved no further inside me. I couldn’t feel his ball sack settling against me; I knew that he was nowhere near fully inside me.

He started moving lazily, screwing me with a lighter touch than I would have expected from his threat to hurt me. He was in no hurry to fuck me fully, I realized. Merely placing himself inside me was enough for the time being.

Despite that, my legs shook from the way he was edging against my insides, and I could feel trails of sweat trickle across my torso. It felt like he was prying me open, as if I had never been fucked before. Maybe not so tightly, I thought. I shut my eyes, letting myself ride the idle but somehow inexorable thrusts.

Something tightened on my balls, as if they’d suddenly been clamped in a vise. Unlike the smack of seconds before, though, this grip was calculated to hurt. I cried out, my eyes flying open.

“Keep them open,” Dillon commanded, the slow, steady movements inside me keeping the same pace.

 _How could he have known?_ I wondered. He shouldn’t have been able to see my face. But as I glanced around, I saw the mirror set into the wall across the bed from us. From head-on, I looked like I was being ridden. My hands were all but balled into the bed; my hair was matted from lack of care over the last couple of days. My eyes were open and, for just a second, met Dillon’s.

He grinned, showing perfect teeth, and must have seen something in my face to spur him on. He pressed himself further into me in one smooth motion, his balls nestling against my ass for just a single stroke.

It felt as if I was being ripped in two. I’m not too proud to admit that I screamed, the sound bouncing off what I both hoped and somehow knew were soundproof walls. A stinging, stabbing pain arced inside me, and my scream dissolved into a sob.

But just as quickly as that had happened, he retreated, keeping his cock further outside of me, just the head and a little beyond inside me again. Stung like that as I had been, though, every single one of those seemingly gentle thrusts now seemed to rub against raw, tense skin.

I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he had hurt me as much as he had. I grit my teeth, swallowing down a second sob, hearing him coo soothingly behind me. The tone of his voice felt perverse for a man who had just forced me to take the length of his impressive shaft.

He pulled all the way out, his cock feeling heavy as it left me, leaving a void in its wake. I gasped for air, feeling as if I’d spent the last few minutes plunged underwater. Alcohol would have taken the edge off, but we were both sober, and things were strikingly clear.

He wasn’t done, though. With a hand on my waist, he moved to flip me over on my back, my ass throbbing and my cock standing at full mast between us. His fingers encircled it lightly, a deft touch, and he let me lie there inertly as he used a hand to stroke himself as well as me, timing the strokes as if testing which of us would cede control first.

It didn’t take me long at all to fail that test. Ten or twelve pumps later, I felt my shaft twitch where he was stroking me. He noticed too, speeding up the motions so that I would cum more quickly, his hand sliding my foreskin against my shaft with a steady rhythm. It was a cheap trick, but it was a good one; I wanted to cum. I needed to cum. I had spent too long waiting for it to happen, and now it was happening so quickly I could do nothing but ride the wave of my own arousal.

I was putty in his hands, and I watched helplessly as he stroked me to completion, my balls twitching before I released into his palm, splattering up to his wrist, the release rolling against me in blessed relief, my panting breaths feeling light and fluttery. He didn’t seem to mind, though, letting the semen pool against his hand before he flattened his palm on my bare chest, staining me with my own release. I was panting, exhausted, and spent, the throes of my orgasm pulsing through me. I had been fucked by someone who I could see fully controlling me, someone from whom it would be impossible to break away. Dillon Croyle was indeed a master as he had claimed, but I was not—not yet—his slave. I was only the man whom he had left spent from a stinging fuck, and I knew I wasn’t the first.

He still wasn’t done, I realized. Within seconds, the reason became inescapably clear, as he dangled his cock over my face, stroking it obscenely. I shut my eyes just in time to avoid being shot in the eye with cum as he finished, hot fluid dripping onto my face and into my hair. My face burned hotly, and at least some part of it had to be embarrassment.

When I could force myself to open my eyes, I saw his form still hovering over me, his cock still somewhat stiff with his lessening arousal, dripping and heavy above me.

“You’re not going to take long at all to get where I want you,” he breathed, almost as if it was a mantra. “You’re already halfway there. All you need is a little training. Well worth the effort.” He bent down a little, his dick inches from my lips. It dripped with cum and more besides. “Clean me off, and then I’ll let you rest.”

It was another test, I knew. He wanted to see how far I would obey him without forcing the issue. I saw no reason to deny him, not knowing how seriously he took the request but not wanting to risk the cost of misjudgment. So my tongue slid along his flagging shaft just as it had done minutes before, tasting his cum and my own body alongside it. As I worked to clean him, a satisfied smile crossed his face, and he reached down to brush some damp hair off my face, almost tenderly. “You’re already mine,” he said, and I knew with damning certainty that it was true.


	4. Chapter 4

We had been safe for a few weeks afterward, but now it was mainly Marko and I who were the core of Insight. The diaspora had flung some of the other people worlds away, and I wondered how long it would take the job to get back to normal. Nonetheless, Marko had already given me that investigation which he had promised me, and I was glad to have something to keep my mind off the strange way we’d been ordered to dissipate from Morgan’s World.

We were never going back there, as far as I was concerned. It would take someone really stupid to do something like going back to the scene of the crime. Fortunately, Marko had mentioned nothing about the idea, and as we’d drifted from craft to craft over the last couple of weeks after he’d found me on Osiris, I had dismissed the possibility entirely.

There was a lot of money at play, and I’d have been an idiot not to notice. I stared at what Marko showed me, shaking my head. “That’s not a Collective agent’s salary. That’s more than someone like that earns. So what’s his game, Marko? You think he’s skimming off the top?”

“Whatever he’s doing—” Marko moved a few things around on the screen in front of us, fingers flicking through the data, “—he’s made a mistake. It shouldn’t take us long to sort him out, huh? With my brains and your tech savvy.” He reached out to clap me on the shoulder, a gesture of camaraderie.

“Thanks,” I said dryly.

“Would you prefer I say that you don’t know a fucking thing about technology? All right. We’ll go with that. Zakari Jann, the man I hired thanks to his track record of making life very miserable for Collective data scientists, has lost everything he previously knew about breaking their systems.”

I had to grin at that, and refocused after a moment on what I was seeing. “If he’s skimming off the top, someone would pick up on that. The Collective’s shit, but they wouldn’t knowingly keep on anyone who was committing fraud against them. That person would be booted in a second. So he’s got to be getting paid on the sly somewhere, either from some side job or some secret mission or something.”

Marko leaned in, close enough for me to catch the scent of his heightened pheromones. He was on a job. I wondered whom he was going to chat up tonight. He was the face of Insight; if he had to romance some rich scumbag, it was a sacrifice he was more than willing to make, I suspected. “So here’s _your_ secret mission: find out.”

It took several sleepless nights, fueled by drink and a bit of Ghostvine, but I made my way into the anonymous Collective man’s accounts. Routine payments, twice a week, from somewhere past the Cygnus Rift, closer to the solar system. His homeworld, possibly, but I couldn’t be sure. All I knew was that the fellow whose identity I still hadn’t sussed was making more than any Collective heavy had any right to be.

I tried to pin an identification on the guy, but I couldn’t find much data. I knew he was a member of the military, but that’s not saying much for the Collective, is it? Half of them enlist, it seems like, because they buy into all the propaganda about peacekeeping and being the arbiters of justice in a crazy, tilted universe.

I had no read on him beyond that. So I concentrated on where the money came from. Whoever had paid him had plenty of money, to keep it up at such a clip. Several possibilities came to mind but were quickly discarded. One was too rich for me to see him owing a Collective man anything; the other was a married woman, and if he’d had an affair with her, it had to be in virtual reality, because neither had crossed the Rift to find each other in the real world. Someone owed him a favor for some previous action, but I couldn’t be sure who, where, or why.

Still, I took all this to Marko, with advice that I needed more time to isolate anything really worthwhile. I was relieved when it seemed to be enough information for him not to put me back on the task; I had already become a bit bored of it.

But when Marko made the moves he did, I saw my chance to bolt.

It isn’t that I don’t believe in Insight. I do. That’s why I left. It happened three or four nights later, with Marko dressed to go out and swindle someone again. I had been playing some VR game, but I pulled the headset away, looking up at him. He must have seen the question on my face, because he shrugged, buttoning up his jacket with his dark-skinned fingers.

“Going to meet with Arkadia Renzo.”

“You—what the fuck? Marko, she’s a Collective diplomat. The Ambassador herself, one of the Consuls.”

“I know.” His mouth quirked in an apologetic smile. “I’ve got to strike a bargain with her. I don’t want to. but it’s the only choice if you don’t want us both to be hauled in and shot to hell by the end of the week.”

I stared, pushing myself to my feet. I knew Marko was putting himself in a trap. I just didn’t know why. Had he decided to turn traitor? This hadn’t been a recent choice. How long had he been meeting with her?

“You could kill her instead,” I suggested, although it felt weird advice to give. I’m not a killer; that’s patently obvious. But I would have done my best to rid the galaxy of everyone with the last name ‘Renzo.’ They had controlled the Collective for as long as I had been alive, and for a few years prior. They were the reason I had fled to Insight when I’d been dismissed from my job. Now Marko was meeting with the woman who was the figurehead of the Collective?

But he was shaking his head, smoothing his clothes carefully, fastidiously. “Listen, Zak. I’m not throwing in the towel. But I’m going to negotiate something with her so that Insight has a better position. So we’re not completely obliterated. And you’re looking at me like it’s a bad thing.”

“Because it _is_ ,” I insisted. “It is a bad thing. it’s a betrayal.”

“Maybe it seems like one to you, but it’s not to Insight. You’re forgetting who’s in charge.”

I stared at him, shaking my head. The path I had to take solidified at that very moment, but getting into a fight with him would only make it obvious to him, so I put my headset back on and turned back to my game. He watched me for a long few seconds, uncomfortable for both of us, before advancing towards the door. It slid open and he was gone.

Time for me to act. I exited the game I’d been playing, going into Insight’s bank accounts for a moment. There were people who still believed in the cause, and I wouldn’t deprive them. But part of the privilege of being Insight’s main techie is that I had the logins to all the financial accounts, including Marko’s personal one. I could do some damage that way, and he wouldn’t realize until I was off-world.

Disappointed he didn’t have more than a few thousand chips, hardly enough to keep me afloat for more than a week or so with my drinking habit, I pushed the money into my account anyway. It was an act of treason as well, but only a personal one. Marko might never forgive me, but Insight—if it was still extant after his meeting with the Renzo woman—would survive my theft.

I packed quickly. Though hesitation was still something my sense of honor was grappling with, I knew any physical delay would cost me. I needed to be in a spaceship within the hour, and it needed to be out of orbit at the very least. Marko had enough pull, theoretically, to ground any ship that was still fighting gravity here, and I didn’t want to see his reaction to what I was doing. At least I could make myself scarce on Osiris again; I doubted he’d look for me in the same place twice.

* * *

“What were you thinking about?” The inquiry was surprisingly gentle, honestly curious, and as I pulled myself out of my memories, I saw no trace of deception on Dillon’s face. “You weren’t sleeping; I know that much.”

I should have been, though. After I had followed his request to clean him off, still sore, he hadn’t demanded anything else of me. That didn’t mean he had left me alone, though. His hands had roamed over every inch of me, flicking my softening nipples, sliding along the inside of my thighs, tracing up my sides. At length, I had relaxed to his touch, nearly falling asleep, thinking about the past with Marko and the money I had stolen from him. Not for the first time, I wondered how Marko had reacted.

But there was no way I was going to explain this to a Collective officer, even one who had bought my freedom.

“Nothing.”

His mouth curved up in a smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Don’t lie to me. I’ll let you have your secrets, but I don’t want to catch you lying again.”

Something had gone wrong on Morgan’s World. I had landed; I had contacted Marko. He hadn’t replied. Instead, I’d fallen into the hands of the Collective. The negotiation for my freedom seemed strange, too. i was a known criminal, and while nobody might have known who Null Set was—though Dillon certainly had—they knew my reputation, and if Dillon had arranged for me to keep my life, there had to be a reason for the Collective to keep me alive.

Marko had sold me out, I realized. He must have turned me over to the law. I wouldn’t have put it past him. We were close, like any comrades, and we’d even fooled around a couple of times, but I had to be a traitor in his eyes, and Marko wasn’t the type to let a betrayal slide. He couldn’t afford to be. Forgive one person once, and then ten people think they can do the same.

Dillon reached out to tilt my chin up, making my eyes meet his. “That’s not nothing, Zak.”

“Fine. Hell. All right. Why do you call me Zak?”

“Short for Zakari, isn’t it?”

“How do you know that I prefer it to Zakari?”

“Lucky guess.”

 _You’re a bad liar too,_ I thought, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.

Dropping from my chin, his hands moved downward, pulling a cheek aside with one hand, a finger of the other prying at the cleft of my backside. I still hurt from that single, lashing thrust, but I made a conscious effort to relax, letting him slip a finger inside me, stroking the tense ring of muscle it had just worked its way through.

“You said you fucked men before,” he murmured, “but I think your true preference is receiving. Next time, I promise it’ll be a smoother ride. I had to see how willing you were, though.”

“To sleep with you? You didn’t need to do _that_ to figure that out.”

He shook his head. I still hadn’t looked away from his penetrating eyes, I realized. “To let me do what I wanted to you, regardless of how it felt to you.” The nail of his finger inside me scraped lightly, as if proving that point; I clenched my teeth, but didn’t dare pull away.

Could I have pulled away? Drowsily, I wondered about the possibility. He hadn’t given me many options, but at the same time, he hadn’t held a gun on me. He hadn’t left any marks on me either. There had been no physical force involved, but I had submitted to him as if there were no other option. Some part of me wanted it too, desired him and what he offered me. I still did. I wanted him atop me, fucking me, dominating me—I pulled my thoughts away as I felt my cock twitch.

His finger slipped out of me, and he pulled away. “Wash your face. I don’t want to startle room service. Any allergies? I don’t want you dying in my bedroom.”

I shook my head. I was starving again, I realized. The nutrient bar hadn’t done much to stave off hunger, and I was vaguely relieved I was getting a bite to eat.

“Bathroom’s down that hall,” he murmured, nodding to the door to the right of the bed. He pulled on his trousers, not bothering with underwear.

I pushed myself out of bed, heading to the bathroom and flicking on the light. My face glistened with drying semen, and I fumbled for a washcloth, letting the water warm. There would be no way to get it out of my hair without washing it, but I still tried, scrubbing at the streaky spots amidst my dark locks as best I could. I was still making an effort to clean myself off when I heard the door ding. Room service had arrived. I wanted to hide in the bathroom long enough for the food runner to avoid seeing me, naked and used, but I was not quite so lucky.

“Food’s here. Aren’t you coming out?”

The door hadn’t closed; the server was likely still in the room. I draped the towel around my waist, padding from the bathroom, feeling exposed even as covered as I was.

The girl that had brought us the food was trying very hard not to look at me, and equally hard not to blush. “I… I’ve come at a bad time,” she mumbled. “I’m sorry, Major.” Her eyes darted anywhere in the room but on me.

“Forget it,” Dillon said. Dressed in an undershirt and trousers by now, he moved beside me, placing one hand on my neck. It was possessive, and it was definitely a warning. I willed myself to stay still, even as I dreaded what would inevitably happen. “I’m teaching our friend here that I get what I want. Can either of you guess what I want right now?”

I definitely could. The girl’s eyes finally landed on mine, her face contorted in a paroxysm of sympathy and helplessness. Her hands twined against her work uniform, but she shook her head no in answer to Dillon’s question. I couldn’t even bring myself to do that.

“I want you to tell Zakari here that it’s a shame to cover himself up like he is,” Dillon said lightly, and moved to shove the towel I’d wrapped around myself to the floor. “Especially when I never told him to do so.”

I was exposed before the service girl, flaccid and rooted to the spot. The fingers on my neck tightened only slightly, preventing me from turning away. I saw her flush with embarrassment at the sight, and I’m sure I did the same; my face felt hot again.

“If he liked women, you’d make an adorable couple right now, between how embarrassed the two of you are,” Dillon observed wryly. “Set it on the table by the door and go.”

My rescue would not come from the room-service girl, I knew. She was grateful to turn away, and I stood there, frozen, as she scurried away, feeling the military man chuckle lowly behind me. He clapped me on the shoulder, perhaps meaning to be reassuring, before stepping away. “Go. Eat.”

Shame at my unbidden exposure warred with my hunger, and hunger won out. I just about flung myself on the food he’d ordered, lifting up the cloche. To my surprise, he hadn’t skimped on the order. Rich meat in some sort of wine sauce, roast potatoes, and vegetables of riotous colors. I could have inhaled the whole dish. As it was, I ate with abandon, packing it down, standing at the sideboard as if I was watching a holovid at a bar. It was the first real meal I’d had in days, and the first decent meal I’d had in months.

Dillon didn’t join me, though. I turned midway through, studying him. “Aren’t you eating?”

“Before I paid you a visit. I’m glad you’re filling up, though. You’re going to need some more energy.”

The words put a damper on the meal from then on. I ate, but it felt more mechanical, and I could barely taste the food now for wondering what it was Dillon had in mind that I would need to summon more energy for. I couldn’t picture it, but I didn’t feel like there was much of a space for me to ask questions. I drank some wine, not nearly as good as the ’65 Greenleaf I had poured down my throat on the way to Osiris.

When I had eaten my way through a good third of the meal, Dillon put the self-heating lid atop the plate, almost trapping my fork in mid-bite. I pulled my fingers away, puzzled.

“Eat too much rich food, and you’ll make yourself sick from it,” he pointed out. “I don’t want to have to make you clean that up. Come on. We’re not done with what I want to know about you, so I hope you’ve gotten your strength back.”

I couldn’t see what else we could do on his bed that we hadn’t already done, but he led me into the hallway to the bathroom. Was he going to fuck me in the shower? I had done that a few times and liked it; the intoxicating steam and the slipperiness of the other guy’s body and mine tended to make for an entrancing mix.

But there was more to the hallway than just the bathroom, I realized. The same whir I’d heard when the force field had released in the cell I’d been in sounded, and the wall behind the bathroom faded away, replaced by nothing between me and a back room that lay beyond. 

From the glint of metal and chrome and the dark touches of leather, I knew—admittedly more from adult holovids than personal experience—what that room was for.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay! Real life kicked up around the holidays and has only just settled down. Twice-weekly posting continues apace; I've put up the next couple chapters. Warning: things get dark at this point, and more dubious on the con, definitely into crossing into noncon in this chapter. They'll get darker still midway through. But not without tension releases, and never to the point of gore.

The room that lay before me spoke of submission, of control, of whims I had never entirely allowed myself to entertain. Clearly, the man who had purchased my life had no such qualms about his preferences. The substantial collection he had amassed spoke to that. To my side, I saw Dillon watching my reaction, but I let my jaw drop anyway, edging forward uncertainly to take stock of the place.

“You’re decent enough at following orders, but I plan to make you much better at it. Head in whenever you like. We’re going to take this slowly. I don’t want to rush you and break you all the way at once. I have no interest in having a gibbering idiot answering to me.”

At first, I hated what I was seeing, hated what the room before me foretold for me, and hated Dillon Croyle for bringing me to this point. I tensed, shaking my head. “If you think I’m going to let myself be strapped into something in here, you’ve misjudged me. I’m not some damn subservient _coward_.”

The blond man ignored my protests, pressing a button I hadn’t noticed on the wall. The force field sprang up again, hard and solid behind me, hemming me in. I still wasn’t being forced into the room, but I had only a few feet to myself outside of the room, and no way to back up further. I took a careful step forward.

The room was even more decorated with implements and harnesses than I had initially imagined. It wasn’t merely a playroom, the space of some rich dilettante with unusual tastes. It was a full-fledged dungeon, the lighting carefully neutral and the floor a tasteful synthetic material that provided for easy cleaning.

How many people had been to this room before me? What had happened to them? The collection that Dillon had amassed was the work of years, if not decades. He must have used it before. The space was too concealed to be merely here for display.

“You’re not a coward, or you wouldn’t have wound up here. You’d never have joined Insight in the first place. I don’t consider you a coward at all, only a threat to the Collective’s vision and a threat to neutralize.”

“Through torture,” I said.

“That implies you have information I want.”

It occurred to me that, although the response seemed like a challenge to the word _torture_ , it technically wasn’t, but just before I could press that point, he reached out to push me to the ground. The gesture was more surprising than rough, but even so, I lost my balance, toppling to the floor, my arms flailing to brace myself.

What could I know that he couldn’t get from my records? Everything I did was on the computer. I’d been careful to need no traces for the Collective, but once they had my username, a skilled techie in their number could have discovered my tracks. They didn’t need to find out anything more from me.

I wasn’t going to tell him anything outright, I decided. He’d have to earn it. Besides, I didn’t know what he wanted from me, anyway.

As I tried to drag myself onto my feet again, his voice shot through me. “Stay.”

 _Fuck that._ I pushed myself to stand, my jaw set. I might have been easy enough to knock down, but I wasn’t about to let him think he could just set the rules. Not without a fight. Determination had sparked within me, and I was not his to command just for the asking. I turned to face the man, ready to fight for my own sanity.

But he had been ready for me to react. I was aware of his arm swinging towards me, but not in time to duck. The haymaker he delivered me, dead-on to my jaw, sent me reeling punchdrunk, and I dropped back to the floor.

Before I could pick myself up again, he had a booted foot pinning me down by the lower arm. It hurt terribly, although I hadn’t heard anything break, and I looked up at him, waiting for my vision to clear from the mist that had clouded it.

“I told you to stay. Next time, I won’t try not to break bones.” His foot lifted off, but only to aim a savage kick at my ribs.

There was no way out of this room, and no way to avoid his attention. Clearly, I needed to play a longer game than I was playing. If I didn’t bend a little, he’d break me, and I didn’t like that idea at all.

Struggling to keep my wits together, I let out a hoarse cough, watching as Dillon stepped away. He moved for the leather racks, and although I couldn’t distinguish one thing from another, I knew from what I’d seen in holovids that all the selections were likely restraints of some sort. He leafed through them, soft creaking noises from the leather and clinks from metal fasteners floating through the room.

He came back over to me with one, a tangle of straps that made no immediate sense to me.. He held a small device in his other hand, but I did not initially understand what it was. Without a word, he pushed my legs up, bending my knees and buckling a circle of soft leather around my ankles. I didn’t resist, even when he pulled my wrists down, forcing me into an unnatural crouch as he hogtied me. He walked over to the racks again, selecting a blindfold. It felt silky against my eyes as he tied it at the back of my head.

“We’re going to play a game, Zak.”

It was going to be more fun for him than it was for me, I suspected.

“You’re going to guess where I’m going to do this next.”

A shock, white-hot, bolted through my body from my upper left arm. I jerked my arm away, yelping, shaken. The aftereffects of the shock buzzed through me, leaving me dangling on a wildly uncomfortable edge.

“Where next? I’ll be generous. Guess the correct side and I won’t raise the intensity. Get it wrong and you’ll regret it. Be uncivil to me and you’ll regret it.”

It was a ludicrous idea. There was no way for me to guarantee I would guess the correct answer. I could feel my spirit deflating slightly, and shook my head.

“I—uh—right thigh.”

“Right thigh, _who_?”

I knew the title he was looking for. I couldn’t use it yet. I racked my brain for something to use instead. “Right thigh, sir,” I managed, spitting out the last word.

He zapped me on the right shoulder. “Correct side. But you’re being impolite.”

I swallowed, glad he probably couldn’t see my face.

I couldn’t feel him circling me, so I guessed the next one would be on the same side. “Right… right arm.” A beat. “Sir.”

Ten guesses later, the last word was starting to feel reflexive, and the shocks came at a more rapid clip. But he’d only raised the intensity twice. I could still handle it, and I was surprised at that. But the next one was stunningly painful. He applied the electric shock device to the base of my left foot, and it seemed to flash in my brain at the exact same time it stung my foot.

“Holy shit!” I could feel myself shivering. “Don’t—don’t do that again.” My voice felt as if I had spent the last ten minutes being routinely set on fire, crackling and buzzing with each consonant. I knew he wouldn’t take well to the ‘don’t,’ but it was out; I had already said it, and there was no way to backtrack from it.

But Dillon didn’t seem upset by the words. Instead, he paused. I could feel him leaning down so that he was face to face with me. “Don’t do that again, who?” he asked softly.

I groaned, though I don’t know whether it was from the shock’s aftereffects or from the question he had asked. My body was shaking; I’d broken out into a cold sweat, and there seemed to be no signs that the torment I was experiencing would stop anytime soon.

The man reached for my blindfold, edging it down with the shock device. As keyed up as I felt, there seemed to be no change in Dillon’s expression. It was placid and neutral, and he hadn’t even exerted himself enough to sweat, it seemed. He stared at me, and his chin darted, cueing me to answer the question.

“Sir.” I choked out the word.

He didn’t seem to need me to make it believable, though. Instead, he reached for my jaw, pulling my face closer to his. “Stick out your tongue,” he said.

I almost retched at the thought, already knowing how much it was going to hurt. But he squeezed my jaw, already hurting from the punch he’d delivered, and I opened my mouth, slowly forcing my tongue out, flinching as I did so.

“No lasting damage,” he assured me, and I hoped desperately that he wasn’t lying. But it was going to hurt. It was going to be the worst pain I’d felt in a long time, and I was doing nothing to try to stop it.

The device didn’t even make contact with me. Just proximity to the piercing was enough to send electricity coursing over my tongue, without even leaving a mark. I flailed, and he jerked the device away, even as I could feel pain shoot through my tongue and into my skull. It had only been a second or so, but it felt as if my tongue had been splattered with the hottest oil imaginable. Sparks of pain danced on my vision, and I moaned, tears streaking down my face towards the blindfold that had pooled on my neck.

“I know a few places that would be even worse, but we’ll save those for a special occasion.” Dillion seemed unaware of my seething, writhing pain, but at least he didn’t seem to exult in the results he was forcing from me. He dropped my chin, pushing himself to stand again. My gaze followed him as he set the device back wherever he’d gotten it, and then he returned with a whip, thick and thankfully free of any knots or extra bits of metal.

I could take a flogging, compared to what I had just endured. It was just a beating, and I’ve had my ass kicked plenty of times. I relaxed a little, drawing a few breaths to steady myself and get ready for what was about to follow.

He unlatched the connection between my wrists and ankles, dragging me further in the room and hooking my wrists to a length of metal cord. I was jerked onto my toes, dangling there crazily. As I glanced down at myself, I could see a few small burns where the device had made contact.

The whip sailed out, cracking against my back. It was more startling than painful, though I still wouldn’t have volunteered for a repeat session. Dillon let it curl against my side for a second or two before pulling it back.

I could feel myself swinging crazily as I was strung up, and did my best to not react. It was easy to pretend I wasn’t there, that I was watching the flogging happen to someone else, and I let my thoughts drift. But somehow Dillon seemed to sense when I had drifted too much; a stray hand rubbing my body always brought me back to reality, a place where I was a prisoner of someone who understood all too well how to hurt me.

His hand grabbed my hair, pulling my head forward to focus on him. His eyes were dazzling to look at up close, so much so I wondered if they might be contact lenses and not his real color.

“You will crack, sooner or later. I’m curious to see how long it will take.” His voice was warm and confident, no threat whatsoever in it. One finger—was it the same one that had pushed inside of me?—reached to run down my cheek. “I don’t want to push you too far over the edge just yet. If I do that too soon, you’ll be so cooperative you’re mindless, and I don’t want to destroy you completely.”

The words washed over me; he could have been reciting some bullshit oath the Collective said, and it would have made no difference at all. I nodded dully, unable to move.

“I like those I break to know I’m in charge and agree to it. You will, no matter how long it takes. You’ve been curious about this sort of thing all of your life, haven’t you? But never really engaged in it, never let yourself be whom you really are, brought to heel by someone you need more than you need freedom.”

Dillon’s finger pried at the corner of my mouth. Unthinkingly, without resisting, I opened my mouth, sucking on his finger absently. A small smile tilted one side of his lips. He was careful to avoid the stinging area where he’d shocked my tongue, stroking absently along my cheek, before pulling out wetly to trail down across chin, neck, and collarbone. Settling his wet finger on my left nipple, he perked it up from the moist contact, before squeezing it between thumb and forefinger. He repeated the process on the other side, wetting his finger again in my mouth, before pulling back to admire his handiwork.

“Almost,” he decided. He moved over to the side wall again, searching through a drawer for what seemed like it might be a final touch. He returned with a chain with two small screws, adjusting the length as he held it up to me.

He yanked one nipple, placing it inside one screw. It contorted my chest, forcing my pectoral into an awkward point, and pain throbbed as the screw bore the weight of the chain hanging from my torso. The other side was screwed in, a short lead of tiny chain connecting my nipples, and he nodded, satisfied, grinning at me even as random trills of pain coursed through me.

“Why?”

“Two reasons,” he noted idly. “One, I like big tits on anyone I fuck. There’s more to grab. Secondly, you’ll be wearing that in public tomorrow, so I figured it would be the kinder thing to do to get you used to the feeling a night in advance.”

I drew in a sharp breath at that. “I don’t want to go out in public.” Even though I was sure I was on a Collective spaceport, the potential for humiliation was still too great, especially now that I knew Dillon wouldn’t balk at any display of my body.

“I know,” Dillon replied, very nearly sympathetically. “But neither of us has a choice in the matter.”


	6. Chapter 6

Dillon left me strung up with the chain across my chest for another half hour or so (believe me, I was counting the seconds), but at least the time to actively hurt me had passed. The chain was its own special kind of agony, sending paroxysms through me whenever I turned too quickly or too sharply. He reentered when I was about to debate the merits of trying to fall asleep with my hands harnessed over my head.

“I’ve got your pallet set up at the foot of my bed, unless you’d prefer staying here.”

My voice didn’t work at first, but I managed a “No.” And then, when he stared pointedly at me again, I thought to tack a “Sir” onto there as well.

He unhooked my wrists; my feet and hands had already been on pins and needles for a few hours, and my legs and arms were starting to feel numb. Seeing that, he reached out a hand to steady me, only moving to unlock the latch that tied my feet together when he was sure I would stay steady. He popped the clamps off one at a time, and I swayed at the pain flooding my nipples. He steadied me, his hand tightening on my waist.

“Get some sleep,” he advised me as we made our way out of the chamber. “You’re going to need it. I want you well-rested and thinking clearly at this meeting, not making a fool out of me.”

I had no intention of embarrassing him. The consequences could be far too devastating. As I made my way towards the aforementioned pallet, I saw that it was identical to the one that had been in my cell. It might even have been the same one. I didn’t care; exhaustion stole over me upon the sight of any mattress, from Dillon’s sumptuous bedding to my own more humble furniture. I stretched out with my back to the mattress, the only way I figured I would get any sleep with my chest hurting as much as it did.

My thoughts were racing. I ached all over. The shock to my mouth had been the worst, but I had been used for hours. Surely the other man couldn’t keep up this pace for days on end. There would be a way for me to escape. I’d have to wait and watch for the opportunity and take it when I could. For now, despite whatever Marko had done, I was still a believer in Insight’s mission, still not a fan of the Collective, and maybe this predicament I was in would present an opportunity to work against the federation. I was with _Major_ Dillon Croyle, after all, and he had to have something I could use against his military.

He didn’t seem terribly interested in changing my loyalties, either, only in making me obey him, and I was grateful for that, at least. For all he had done to me, he hadn’t brainwashed me. I was still the same man who had entered this station not too long ago, wasn’t I?

I shut my eyes, trying to sleep. At length, exhaustion overtook me, and I succumbed gratefully to it.

My chest had recovered by the time I awoke; I could no longer imagine the clamps digging into tender skin. Dillon had ordered breakfast, and we ate in relative silence. I longed to ask a thousand questions about the meeting we were going to have, but he barely looked at me while we ate and made little effort to sustain conversation with me. At length, he stood up, jerking his chin for me to come with him.

 _Surely not into the torture chamber again,_ I thought, but I went with him unquestioningly. We headed into the bathroom shower. He rinsed himself off mechanically, in the very manner I’d have expected from a soldier, and then stepped aside to let me follow suit.

I expected the water to feel relaxing, but it stung against the burns and whip welts from yesterday; I sucked in my breath, feeling Dillon’s eyes on me from where he stood, drying himself off with a towel. He offered nothing but a shrug, as if the pain couldn’t be helped. He made no move to offer me a second towel, but at least I felt clean, not covered in bodily fluids.

He dropped the towel on the shower floor and headed out of the bathroom, leaving me in there to dry off with his used goods. I picked up the towel gingerly. It was sopping wet from having landed on the shower floor, but I managed, sort of.

He was getting clad in what looked like a dress uniform when I emerged from the bathroom, and looking past him told me that my outfit had already been chosen for me. It wasn’t the skimpy clothes of a porn holovid, though. It was an outfit that echoed the dress uniform, gray with red piping on the trouser legs and shirt cuffs. Briefs instead of boxers, my usual choice, but at least they were soft and didn’t seem too constricting.. I was being clothed as Collective property, a warning for anyone else to not help me, and perhaps an object lesson as well.

“Clamps first,” he insisted, holding out the length of chain again. I hesitated, and he ground out a vaguely frustrated, “Now.”

The touch of metal on my nipples, already erect from the chill in the air, made me flinch, pulling back a little. I was beginning to realize that Dillon was good at picking his battles; he said nothing about my flinch, screwing the clamps down moderately tightly. He reached a hand up to pat me on the shoulder in approval, and then went back to getting dressed.

If I pulled the shirt out and left it untucked, I discovered, could nearly hide the chains I wore from the viewer. Seeing my actions, the other man shook his head. “Tuck it in,” he said. “I want people to see it.”

I didn’t want them to, but I was hardly in a position to refuse the order. I grimaced, and he smiled at the look on my face.

“You’re feeling poorly about this, Zakari. That’s natural. You’ve had a pretty bad shock over the past couple of days, and I’m afraid there’s not much I can do to prevent that, except to give you a bit of advice: enjoy what good parts you can, and don’t let the bad parts put you so far down that you start to lose your mind.”

 _Easy for you to say when you’re the one with his hand on the whip,_ I thought, but I kept my mouth shut.

“Shoes,” he prompted me, and I slid on the soft-soled sandals.

The station was bigger than I’d been led to believe from the brief walk between the holding cell and Dillon’s quarters. Given no particular directions about how to walk, I merely did my best to keep up with the larger man, whose long-legged stride threatened to outpace me as we strode through the corridors. I also did my best to avoid anyone’s gaze. I was sure—since they had to know, didn’t they?—that everyone we went past was staring at me, seeing that thin chain under my shirt, aware of exactly what role I was being forced to take as I accompanied the military officer through the hallway.

Once or twice, I caught sight of some greenery, caught the always peculiar aroma of recycled air, so detectable compared to an arcology. On a station of any size, air is always much more at a premium, and so the recycling happens more and more without an atmosphere to draw from. It stinks, frankly, and permeates everything around it. Working in a greenery on a station might sound like a great job, but honestly nobody wants it.

Still, with this station big enough to house parks like that, I knew I wasn’t dealing with an average place. I might even be on the Collective’s home base. If I was, I needed to find a way to get off it; there would be no escape while on the station. Anywhere I went, Dillon could track me down.

He elbowed me in the side, and I winced. “Right turn.”

He was right, though; I would have missed it and kept walking straight, sunk deep in my thoughts. We weren’t there yet; we were only boarding a skimmer to take us a further distance within the station. He took the lone available seat; I stood before him for a good fifteen minutes, reaching out a hand to hold onto the pole that bisected the skimmer car. He watched me all the while, and leaned in when we disembarked, adding, “Next trip, you’ll be kneeling on the floor in front of me. Try to avoid the grating, if you’re smart.”

We walked for another mile, and all the exertion from the previous day washed over me as we kept moving; I lagged a little. But Dillon said nothing, waiting for me to catch up, before we went down a main hallway towards a set of stairs. More people were here, and I knew any deviation from proper behavior would cost me; I jogged to Dillon’s side, and he placed a hand on my arm, walking me through the door as it slid open before us. His thumb stroked my sleeved forearm idly, and I wondered about that, though I couldn’t ask.

We were inside a cavernous space, lights nearly blinding me. Everything was designed not just to impress, but to overwhelm. In lieu of normal lighting, old chandeliers glittered in a riot of brilliant colors, sending cascading hues onto the walls. The air was not just climate controlled, but scented with some exotic fruit from somewhere like Trappist-1b, lush with juice and a heady aroma. If I hadn’t been a prisoner, I would have lounged on one of the velvet chairs for days, perhaps; as it was, I couldn’t resist placing a hand out to come into contact with the impossibly soft material. But Dillon’s hand tightened on my other arm, and I was pushed forward.

The dark-haired woman with eyes you could drown yourself in was someone I’d seen before. Recognizing her from the portrait that hung on Dillon’s wall, I looked between the two of them, expecting them to embrace. They didn’t. Dillon dropped my arm, offering a short bow to her.

“Ambassador Renzo,” he murmured, “thank you for insisting on a meeting with me. You’ll forgive me the indulgence of bringing Mr. Jann with me.”

Those large eyes turned towards me, assessing me. Even if nobody else we’d walked past had seen the chain, she did, I knew. She knew what position I was in. She smiled at me, and her voice was softer than I would have expected from someone to whom a Collective army Major deferred.

“He is welcome as your property,” she said, and it took me a moment to realize she was speaking to Dillon, not to me. “I hope he’s proving to be everything that you insisted he would be.”

I didn’t dare to look away from her, but I could hear Dillon exhale a breath next to me. “Mostly cooperative, Ambassador. He’ll become more so once I keep working on him. It’s only been a day.”

The woman’s lips curved in a smile. “Good to hear. I’m sure you’re enjoying your work, Major.” And she stepped over to me, running a hand over my chest, pressing her hand flat against one nipple. The clamp bit down; I wanted to scream, but I curled my hands into fists and set my jaw. Somehow, I managed not to voice the pain that was radiating through me.

She pulled her manicured hand away, flashing me a bright smile and moving to seat herself on a velvet couch. She looked like an ancient monarch—maybe Cleopatra, in artistic depictions instead of in reality. Her posture was straight, and her demeanor was cool and collected.

“Show me,” she insisted, her eyes on Dillon rather than on me.

Dillon didn’t hesitate, moving to pull my shirt off over my head. I set my jaw, feeling myself put on display, embarrassment coursing through me. It was bad enough she knew, but it was even worse to have myself shown like that to her and who knows however many other people—it was only then that I realized she had a brace of guards discreetly stationed in the room, most bigger than Dillon, who was no midget.

She leaned forward, a bit more interested, and waved him to continue.

He gave me a quick look, assessing me thoughtfully, and then moved to grab the chain. I moved as if Dillon was my puppeteer, guided down to my knees, and he squeezed my jaw open. For a second, I wondered if I was going to have to perform oral sex in public, bracing myself for the girth of Dillon’s cock, but he moved for his gun. He was careful to show me the safety was on, offering me some small measure of reassurance, before he thrust the gun barrel into my mouth.

Embarrassment had given way to humiliation. I sucked the gun barrel listlessly, seeing the woman smile and hearing one of her guards laugh at this ridiculous parody of cocksucking. My face was red, and I stared up at Dillon, even as he forced the gun barrel into my mouth. The metal was cold on my tongue and teeth, and I was not ready when he forced the gun towards the back of my throat. I coughed, a panicked noise rising from me, gagging on the barrel, and he withdrew it before I could really start to choke.

He wasn’t over, though. He withdrew the gun only to rap me hard across the face with it. This time, I was sure he’d left a bruise and perhaps even worse. I thought I could hear my cheekbone crack. Just a single pistol whipping was in the cards, though. He re-holstered his weapon, pulling me up by the chain. I stumbled to my feet, feeling my eyes start to water.

“You’ll forgive me not showing you the real thing, Arkadia, but you’ve already seen it, haven’t you?” Dillon’s voice was richly humored, and I blinked away tears to focus on the woman before me.

“I wouldn’t mind watching you fuck him at some point,” the woman stated frankly, twirling a hand in her dark hair. I’ve never been interested in women, but I knew that signal; it was an unconscious gesture of real interest.

Dillon’s shoulders squared at that, and he murmured, “I’ll send you the video.”

Her laughter rang like tinkling bells, and she shook her head. “Never an exhibitionist, indeed. I’d nearly forgotten.” She stood from where she had sat to watch the grotesque display, moving over to Dillon with a slinky movement. I could see what had attracted him to her, even as she bent in, placing a deep kiss on his lips.

I couldn’t help but watch to see how Dillon reacted. To my relief, before I could process that feeling itself, he did not kiss her back, and he was the first to break the kiss, pulling away from her. “I’ll keep you updated on what Mr. Jann provides us, Ambassador Renzo,” he stated quite formally, then squared his shoulders, half-turning.

Her mouth formed a little ‘o’ of disappointment, and her eyes locked on mine. I couldn’t read her, though. I wasn’t sure if that was genuine, so I only swallowed, glancing away from her.

“Very well, Major Croyle,” the woman said. “I hope for his sake he proves a worthwhile prospect.”

My face still throbbed from the impact of Dillon’s gun, but I was surprised to see that, as we made our way away from the ambassador’s quarters, Dillon’s face was slightly reddened from some sort of embarrassment as well. His shoulders were squared in a way that I knew asking would be counterproductive at best, and potentially life-threatening at worst, so I kept my mouth shut even as we made our way back to the skimmer.


	7. Chapter 7

The car wasn’t as tightly packed for the return journey, but even so, Dillon pushed me down to the floor ahead of him. He had given me advance notice that I’d be kneeling, so I did my best to avoid the grates as he’d directed. Good advice, I realized. The metalwork of the grating would tear up my shin or my knee, even with the comparatively heavy clothing I was wearing.

As I watched the feet of people seated in the spaces around us, he said nothing for a few minutes, clearly in his own thoughts, before he spoke to me quietly. “Open up.”

I didn’t have the opportunity to ask why, because even as I drew a breath and moved to open my mouth, I realized the fly of his pants was undone, and he was edging his cockhead towards me. My face still hurt, and I wasn’t sure I could stretch my mouth far enough to take him in.

But Dillon wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He forced his cockhead into my mouth, gently but insistently, unceasing despite the groans I offered in feeble protest. Someone laughed nearby us, but he wasn’t paying them any mind, and dimly, I realized why. The tense meeting with Ambassador Arkadia Renzo had given him a need to work all that out of his system. I was only the solution to that problem.

Still, I strained not to gag on him as he plunged within my mouth; I scraped him with my teeth due to lack of preparation. He hissed at the second part, his brilliant eyes flashing a warning at me, and I swallowed hard, a chill coursing down through my throat.

He stroked my hair once before grabbing hold of it, working himself further inside my mouth. I felt as if I would scream, but the weight of his shaft muffled me. I wanted to vomit, feeling bile rise into my throat, my gag reflex already kicking in. But he was holding me there, using me without a second’s thought for the passengers around us, and eventually I gave up, letting him fuck my face with the relentlessness of a terraformer plunging into a cavern on some newfound planet.

It seemed to help him relax, and as he relaxed, the languid strokes within my mouth sped up a little; I could feel the veins on the underside of his cock pulse against my tongue, and could feel him growing stiff with interest.

I had tasted him before, but the thought of having my guts filled with seed began to carve out an apprehensive hollow in my mind. That seemed the safer option for both of us. I couldn’t picture him finishing on my face as he had in the hotel room. But I’d have to be ready for it, and something about his current state suggested he was in no mood to give me a signal when he was finishing.

I sucked the stiff shaft inside my mouth as best I could manage on my knees, even as he slid a little forward in the seat and brought my face closer to the front of his pants. I could see a tangle of blond hair uncomfortably close to my face before he buried my lips against it, forcing his cock all the way inside my mouth, the tip of it touching the back of my throat.

 _Don’t choke_ , I told myself, and although I coughed against him, I at least managed to keep my wits about me. I placed my hands on my knees, leaning in to place myself at a less sharp angle, and as I did so I could feel my own cock strain at the front of my borrowed pants.

Dillon’s eyes were half-shut even as he pulled back for another near-asphyxiating thrust, and the only warning I had was the sudden twitch of his shaft. It was enough, though, thankfully, and I was ready for the hot flood of semen as it coated my throat. Left with no option but to swallow, I drank it down, feeling cum spatter onto the back of my mouth. Dillon let out a quiet moan, the first time I’d seen him lose control even slightly, and made a final thrust in my throat before he withdrew, leaving my mouth sticky and my dick already hard.

He tucked himself back in his pants, heedless of any wet spots that might form, and nodded mutely at me, a small signal of approval. But the reactions of those around us weren’t nearly as discreet as his was.

To our side, someone clapped sarcastically.

“Where’d you get the whore?” a young woman called out.

“Looks like you both enjoyed yourselves, Major.”

I grimaced, but somehow the anonymous audience didn’t bother me as much as Arkadia Renzo had. We disembarked at the next stop, Dillon moving at the same quick clip with which he had started the journey.

My interest hadn’t flagged; I reached a hand down once to stroke myself and try to ease some of that tension, but it didn’t do much good. Dillon didn’t stop me, though. At least having me suck him off seemed to have done him some good, because his thoughts had returned to the real world, instead of wherever they had been between leaving the Ambassador’s chambers and when we’d boarded the transport.

“You did well with the Ambassador and on the skimmer, Zak,” he stated out of nowhere.

I drew a breath at that, feeling pleased at the compliment, before that feeling surprised me. Why should I feel pleased about the treatment I was receiving? I hadn’t asked to suck his cock. I hadn’t asked him to do what he had. Complimenting me for it was like complimenting me for having dark hair. I couldn’t change that either.

“You’re learning to serve. There will be some bumps, some rough patches. But on balance, I’m happy with you, and I think we can move on to the real reason I bought your life.” He turned towards me, a wryness in his voice. “It may surprise you, but I didn’t buy your life just to use you as a sex toy. I need you to help me with something, like I told you the first night you were here. I think now, you might be more cognizant of your position and willing to help me. That’s the truth, isn’t it?”

I nodded. The "fuck that” that I wanted to tell him remained trapped in my head rather than shared with him.

He didn’t fuck me that night. I was left mostly to my own devices, allowed to brush my teeth and rid my mouth of the taste of his release. This time, when the delivery girl came with the food, he made no effort to show me off to her. She still couldn’t quite look at me, and I didn’t entirely blame her. I’m not sure I would have wanted to see me like that either.

* * *

Osiris was exactly as it had always been, and exactly as it would always be. Places like that never change even as the universe moves on. Halfway to Barnard’s Star from Sol, it’s a place nobody goes unless they’re drunk, desperate, killers, or potentially all three. At least I was only two upon my arrival from fleeing Morgan’s World with Insight’s cash in my account, although being a thief didn’t make me much better than any murderers that might have been skulking around the place.

Still, the garish lights scattered about the small station were a hallmark of earlier times, centuries ago, and even though Osiris couldn’t possibly have existed in the late twentieth century, the air of the place seemed like it was trying desperately to hearken back to that era. It was an unforgettable sight, but the same sort of unforgettable as watching your parents accidentally forward you something on the Grid you never thought they were capable of looking up. I couldn’t wait to get in there and get drunker than I already was, but I also wanted to avoid the place, all the same.

I had already sent Marko plenty of messages since I had boarded a craft bound for Osiris for the second time in weeks, but they were all time-delayed. I didn’t want him opening them for a week or two. But he hadn’t even downloaded them, and I wondered about that. Were his communications being intercepted? Was he dead? If he was dead, then did that make me the only Insight administrator left alive?

I don’t like being anyone’s boss in times like that, and I planned to prove it by getting more drunk than anyone with any sense of good taste would allow. Fortunately, Osiris was just the place to rid yourself of any sense of style.

I headed into the first nameless bar. Osiris doesn’t believe in naming its watering holes, or anything else. You remember the number of the place and, once you have the number, you have the directions. It’s a simple, reliable system. But what each place lacks in individuality, they seek to outdo each other by making each establishment as flashy as they can. There’s more than just a sense of pride at play, too. Flashing, blinding lights and a press of people and maybe a few exosentients too makes it easier for anyone to steal your wallet or drug your drink.

It’s not just the Tarses you have to watch out for, although their tentacles make them expert pickpockets if you’re carrying physical chips. Nor is it the tiny, flying Sironians, who can be in and out before you know what’s happening. It’s the Gollies — sorry, the Golatians — that are the real threat. Gollies can mess with your head worse than any espion. They can make you think you’re seeing what you’re not, or not seeing what you are. They’re banned from bars on most worlds, but Osiris has no such exceptions.

So I wasn’t surprised when I came face to painted face with one of those fuckers.

“I sssee you have yust arrived.” At least the Gollie wasn’t wearing war paint. At least they gave warnings when they were feeling deadly. “Have a drink with me, tell me a ssstory of where you have come from.” The figure put a vision into my head of it grabbing my shirt and pulling me forward, but I couldn’t feel myself move. “Young human-man, you seem thirsssty.”

The sibilant cadence wasn’t reassuring, but I wasn’t sure the Gollie wouldn’t break my brain if I said no, so I walked ahead, letting the small four-legged sentient scamper behind me. They hopped up onto the barstool next to the one I found, and before anyone could shove them off, the frill around their neck sprung out as if it were a kite being opened impossibly quickly.

The Gollie ordered a drink—not liquor, as any alcohol poisons them—and then waved a six-fingered hand at me to order my own. I picked top-shelf booze. Why not? Gollies are a customer you can’t refuse, and this one was no exception. Savoring my drink for a moment, I didn’t look at the creature next to me, until they spoke again.

“You have come here in sssomething of a hurry, maybe after an event you could not have foretold. Or maybe one you created. You are worried, although you have not shared that with anyone, Mr. Yann.”

I didn’t bother correcting my name. Gollies have trouble with standard speech, but they definitely don’t have any trouble turning you into a drooling idiot.

“Or maybe,” the Gollie murmured, turning towards me, their eyes shining brightly in the riotous lighting of the bar, “you have ssstolen chipsss and are trying not to be found. Thinking to hide yourself among all the people, another faccce in the crowd.” A sip of milk later, the creature commanded me to lean in close. Not in speech, of course. But the thought entered my head, and I was compelled to close the distance between myself and the alien. The Gollie’s voice dropped low. “You will regret it. Your actionsss will be your undoing, and you will be in a worssse place than if I had broken your head. I can sssee it hanging over you.”

The prediction unsettled me; I leaned back to take a careful sip of liquor. It settled in my stomach, but only just.

The Gollie stared at me, expressionless, looking like a theater actor. I stared back, but I knew that the tiny figure was already working their way through my thoughts, trying to parse good information from bad. There was no protection from their ability, and I could only hope that, whatever they found, they wouldn’t announce it to the bar at large.

“You are not a traitor by nature, but you have opted to become one becaussse you don’t believe your leader. But you will be forccced to commit a greater betrayal, and you will be made into a different man.” The words seemed to exhaust the Gollie, who plinked their drink down, turning away from me, falling into a stupor. There would be no waking the creature for the next while, but the frill still out around the being’s neck warned anyone from waking it, at risk of losing their mind to a subconscious assault.

The words haunted me for the next half hour, even though I moved as far away from the Gollie as I could while still remaining in the bar. A lap dance by some woman without my having asked for it did nothing for me, but it wouldn’t have anyway. All the same, I could appreciate a beautiful, curvy form even if I didn’t want to make love to the woman who owned it. But right now it had much appeal for me as if it had been the Gollie gyrating on my lap.

The woman leaned in, her eyes on me. A hand reached between my legs, but instinctively I pulled back. She pouted, almost childlike, her lower lip sticking out. Even if I had been interested, that look on her face would have eliminated even the remotest possibility. “What’s the matter, handsome?” she drawled. “Don’t you like women?”

I stared coldly at her. “No.”

The directness startled her, and she pulled off my lap with a huff. She was pretty enough she didn’t have to wait for long, and as she settled on the lap of the purportedly horse-hung Centauran, I wondered if the awful inherent pun had any truth to it. She kept on flashing me glances as she got him off, as if she could excite me with her movements, but my thoughts were already elsewhere.

The Gollie had said that I would be _made into_ a different man. By what, or whom? The idea both intrigued me and repelled me, and I shut my eyes, sipping the absolutely fantastic drink the Gollie had bought for me. The liquor burned my throat but warmed my insides, and I drifted off into thought.

What sort of man would I want to become? I was a thief, but I remembered Marko insisting I was a good man. He was an unreliable judge, to be sure, but I hoped he wasn’t wrong in that instance. I didn’t picture myself as a villain, but I figured most villains didn’t. Still, I was not part of the Collective, so that was a point in my favor. The Collective was aggressively conquering space as far as it could, pulling independent nations and planets governed by exosentients under its banner, and the idea of that tyranny repelled me.

I had joined Insight to fight that control, and I believed in its ideals, maybe even more than Marko had. I wanted the Collective stopped. I wasn’t sure I wanted it crushed. But I definitely wanted it controlled; I definitely wanted it to stop pursuing such an aggressive policy, and the only way I knew how to do that, given I was no diplomat, was to join the paramilitary.

But now my small slice of the rebellion had been neutralized. Marko was having meetings with the Ambassador herself. And I had turned traitor to him, because he had turned traitor to the ideals he had claimed Insight believed in.

I was a complicated man, I decided, but a fundamentally decent one. What would I be made into? I would never join the Collective. They’d have to kill me first and revive me to make me into a zombie built for their agenda. There would be no way to prevent that, but I would have no say in it. So, if I wasn’t going to join and I wasn’t going to be killed, there remained only one option, if the Gollie was speaking the truth—and of course they were.

I would be taken prisoner by the Collective, perhaps. The idea made my shaft twitch, subtly, and I drank some more booze, hoping the drink would let me deny that feeling. I knew my idea about it was not reality, and I had no urge to see the reality. All the same, I could see myself enjoying it, if it happened the right way. If my captor were interested in me, the idea of being fucked by a Collective soldier had a certain dark appeal.

It was a terrible thought, an unwanted thought, and I grimaced, not wanting to think about it. I didn’t want to imagine the press of a strong body atop mine, plunging into me, filling me completely enough that I couldn’t imagine life without the other man’s shaft inside me—stop, I told myself.

There was a faint beep from my travel bag. I looked over, seeing a small LED flash, and my brows drew together. I didn’t know what it was, but I realized why it was there. Marko had slipped something into my bag, and I hadn’t thought about it for weeks. He had told me to remember it too. I unfastened my bag, pulling out the small device.

Something was being sent from my location. I could not see what it was; the small transmitter contained no indication. But I knew what it meant. Marko had been tracking me all the way to Osiris, and I’d been seated here long enough to send a signal to him.

He was going to find me on Osiris, and he was going to kill me, I knew. I would have to leave here quickly. Abandoning the transmitter on the table nearby me but swigging the rest of the drink, I stood up, pushing my way through the crowd. I’d have to get out of range of the tracker, as quickly as I could, and I plunged myself into the riotous nightlife of Osiris, hopefully losing myself in the crowd.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Would the flashback read better italicized online? Thanks for thoughts!


End file.
